Federal investigators probe Google over age-discrimination complaints

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FILE – This Oct. 20, 2015, file photo, shows a sign outside Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Authorities have arrested a Northern California man suspected of attacking the headquarters of Internet search giant Google with Molotov cocktails and a gun. Mountain View police arrested Raul Diaz on the company’s campus shortly after midnight Thursday, June 30, 2016. The 30-year-old is charged with one count of arson in connection with an attempted firebombing of a Google vehicle used to map streets. Authorities are investigating whether the 30-year-old is connected to two other attacks, including the torching a company self-driving car and the shooting out of office windows. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

MOUNTAIN VIEW — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has launched an investigation into alleged age discrimination by Google, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court.

A court filing from a plaintiff in the suit accuses Google of stonewalling the EEOC investigation, charges the tech giant denies. In an earlier filing of its own, Google acknowledges it was the subject of federal age-discrimination complaints and is under investigation.

Plaintiff Cheryl Fillekes, a systems engineer who interviewed with Google at age 47 but was never hired, referred in a filing last week to a federal probe of the company.

“The EEOC has received multiple complaints of age discrimination by Google, and is currently conducting an extensive investigation into Google’s employment policies and practices,” the document said.

Details of the investigation were not included in the filings. A commission spokeswoman said the agency is barred by law from confirming, denying or discussing investigations. Whether the probe concerns alleged discrimination in hiring, firing or workplace environments has not been made public.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the investigation.

The lawsuit and investigation are taking place against a tech industry backdrop in which older workers are shuffled out to make way for younger — and cheaper — employees, said UC Davis computer science professor Norman Matloff, who studies age discrimination in the sector.

“The magic word ‘diversity’ doesn’t seem to apply to age in Silicon Valley,” Matloff said. “Age discrimination is rampant in the industry. We’re not talking about age 55 necessarily — it even occurs at age 35.”

Pay tends to rise with experience, Matloff noted. “Literally, the bottom line is money,” he said. “The older people are just considered too expensive.”

Salary website PayScale calculates that while a 27-year-old software developer with a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford could expect to make $112,000 starting at Google, a 47-year-old with the same qualifications but 18 more years of experience could anticipate a $153,000 salary.

Age discrimination often “seems to be much more blatant” than gender- or race-based bias, said Raymond Peeler, a senior attorney adviser at the federal employment commission. While discrimination on the basis of race or gender frequently arises out of dislike for a category of people or a desire not to be involved with them, discrimination by age often hinges on a belief that only workers of certain ages have the required job skills, Peeler said.

“I’ve known tech-savvy folks in their 60s. I’ve known Luddites in their 20s,” Peeler said. “There’s not necessarily a connection between age and one’s ability to deal with technological issues.”

Commission data show age-discrimination charges across all U.S. businesses dropped to 20,144 last year from 23,264 in 2010. The commission’s findings of age discrimination over that period fell to 611 cases from 753. In California, the number of charges dropped to 1,569 in 2014 from 1,856 in 2010. Data specific to the tech sector was not available.

The lawsuit against Google is scheduled for trial in May 2017. Fillekes claims Google interviewed her in person for four different jobs from 2007 to 2014, “including some occasions when Google affirmatively reached out to her about the opening based on her impressive qualifications and didn’t hire her,” according to a court filing. She was 47 when first interviewed, the document said.

Fillekes signed onto an age-discrimination suit filed in April 2015 by Robert Heath — a former software engineer for IBM, Compaq and General Dynamics — who in 2011 at age 60 was invited by Google to apply for an engineering job.

“Google’s workforce, comprised mostly of workers under the age of 40, is grossly disproportionate to … U.S. workforce norms,” the lawsuit said.

Last week, Fillekes applied to U.S. District Court in San Jose to have the suit certified as a collective action that would allow anyone to join who didn’t get hired after interviewing in person, at age 40 or above, for Google software, systems or site-reliability engineering jobs from Aug. 13, 2010, to the present. Heath will seek to have a broader class certified to include applicants who didn’t get to the in-person interview stage, his lawyer said.

Google in July 2015 responded to the lawsuit in a court filing, admitting that it had reached out to Heath and Fillekes for interviews and that it didn’t hire either applicant after interviewing them.

“Google alleges its actions were motivated by reasonable factors other than age,” the firm’s response said. A company spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying Google doesn’t discuss pending litigation.

Ethan Baron is a business reporter at The Mercury News, and a native of Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley. Baron has worked as a reporter, columnist, editor and photographer in newspapers and magazines for 25 years, covering business, politics, social issues, crime, the environment, outdoor sports, war and humanitarian crises.

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.